


unconventional tokens of affection

by inkvoices



Series: Of Wax And Blood [5]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: be_compromised, Demon AU, Developing Friendships, Gen, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 18:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/pseuds/inkvoices
Summary: No one had warned Clint to be wary of demons bearing gifts.





	unconventional tokens of affection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crazy4Orcas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazy4Orcas/gifts).



> **Warnings:** dead people, body parts (none of which are consumed or eaten during the course of this fic!), weapons, swearing, and frustration over miscommunication. 
> 
> **Author Note:** For [this prompt](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/449028.html?thread=8775684#t8775684), which is also the title, from Crazy4Orcas on a long ago be_compromised Valentine’s Promptathon. With thanks to CloudAtlas for beta reading :)

Clint rubs at his dripping hair one-handed with a towel on the short walk from the showers to his locker, certain in this moment that there’s nothing better in life than being clean. A mission tailing a mark through an abattoir, a landfill site cheek by jowl with a slum, and waterways polluted with raw sewage tends to do that.

He drops the wet towel on the floor, spins his combination lock back and forth, and opens his locker, trying to remember what civvies he’d left here after his last laundry day. Hopefully his favourite hoodie - the one that’s a hug in clothing form.

The contents of his locker are mostly as he remembers it being the last time he used it: comfy worn in jeans folded in half over a trouser hanger, emergency suit jacket and trousers hanging next to them that look practically new they’ve had so little use, a couple of t-shirts and clean underwear in a pile on the top shelf, a space for the wash kit that he’s just been using, odds and ends like spare arrowheads… 

And then there’s what he doesn’t remember. 

On top of his folded SHIELD hoodie, the one he’s had for years with the frayed cuffs, faded logo, and strange burn mark, are a pair of eyeballs, viscera soaking into the material. 

The eyes stare up at him. 

Clint stares back.

“Natasha!” he shouts, because when weird shit happens yelling for his partner often clears things up pretty quickly, particularly when body parts are involved.

“Hill has informed me that it is inappropriate for me to enter the men’s changing rooms and showers,” Natasha replies from the corridor outside, voice raised so he can hear her clearly through the closed locker-room door. “Hurry up. I want noodles.”

“And I want _not_ to find eyeballs in my locker.”

He pulls on underwear and jeans, taking care not to disturb the eyeballs, then stalks over to the door and pushes it open. Natasha is leaning against the wall opposite, head tilted to one side and wearing a confused frown.

“Eyeballs,” he repeats. “Was it you?”

He thinks maybe it’s a prank, one that someone else put her up to since people have been jumping on the ‘teach Natasha how to be human’ train lately. 

Few people are aware that she’s _not_ actually human, but apparently the cover story they cooked up where Natasha was raised as an assassin in Russia until her recent defection to SHIELD is something that people buy into as a reason for her quirks. Clint had been dubious about the believability even though the original joke had come from him, but he guesses too much time spent in nests and not enough with his boots on the ground have made him forget how alien most people stupidly think the ‘bad guys’ are, especially foreign bad guys. Alien enough that Natasha would have no idea about pop culture or world foods or even how to make a ‘proper’ cup of coffee until she’s been shown, and they’re more than happy to show the foreigner in their midst what ‘proper’ means.

Of course the idiocy of people is one of the reasons why Clint tends to prefer being up in a nest in the first place.

“Yes.” Natasha straightens out of her slouch against the wall. “I have brought you the eyeballs of your enemy.”

“The eyeballs of my…” Clint rubs a hand over his face, wishing it had been a prank because at least that would’ve made some kind of sense. “Any enemy in particular?”

“Carson Mack,” she replies promptly, naming the mark that he’d finally had the go-ahead to take out this morning, after Strike Team Delta had suffered through a three-month, dragged-out mission. Said mission having included the abattoir, landfill site, and streams that were more sewage than water, not to mention children being forced into drug addiction and prostitution. 

Clint can’t say he particularly cares that any dead man, especially this dead man, is missing his eyes. It’s the eyes being in his locker that he objects to. Also: “Hill is gonna be pissed.”

“Why?”

“No more body parts, remember?”

Natasha’s frown deepens. “I did not consume them. Or eat them.”

“Which is great. I’m glad to hear that, really I am. But there are eyeballs in my locker.” He sighs. “And I was looking forward to wearing that hoodie.”

He settles for wearing two t-shirts instead - a long-sleeved grey one underneath a short-sleeved number that proclaims ‘SHIELD Charity Fun Run Winner 1998’. The eyeballs he wraps in a clean towel without touching them and delivers to Hill’s desk. Luckily she’s not in her office, which means they can escape for noodles. Over which Clint tries to explain to Natasha where she went wrong.

Apparently with only limited success, because then there’s the laser crossbow.

Clint tries to avoid eating on site when he can help it. Some SHIELD canteens are better than others, but none of them are what you might call _good_. The canteen at the Fridge wins by a long shot, probably one of those ‘we’ve locked you up with a bunch of really dangerous people to keep an eye on them, please don’t team up with them and turn on us’ kind of perks. The New York one has decent brownies and Pizza Tuesdays, but the only people who eat the egg salad are those desperate for a plausible sick day.

Sadly needs must; he has too many mandatory meetings too close together today with no time to nip out for decent food. At least it’s Tuesday and Clint is sat across from Agent Sims discussing the best and worst pizza topping combinations they’ve experienced when Natasha drops the crossbow on the table between their trays. 

With the safety catch off, he notices, because Natasha’s attitude towards weapon safety is ‘if you don’t want to shoot it then don’t’ with no regard for human error.

A handful of baby Agents on the next table freeze like rabbits caught in headlights and a longstanding Agent who ought to know better fumbles and drops his fork. Clint mentally awards points to Agent Sims, who merely raises her eyebrows.

“I have brought you the weapon of your enemy.” Natasha looks fierce about it, hands flexing into fists at her side, but he doesn’t think she’s angry. More... frustrated maybe.

Clint had wondered where that had gotten to; last seen aimed in his direction. It’s rare he finds anyone else inclined towards his kind of weaponry. Although he’s usually accused of having raided a museum for his bows, however much SHIELD jazzes them up, whereas this piece is something straight out of science fiction. It shoots _lasers_ for Christ’s sake. 

Yeah, okay, Clint prefers a longbow, but _lasers_.

“Pretty sure that should be in evidence,” Sims comments.

Natasha turns her gaze on her and frowns, but Sims is right. Damn it. 

Clint gets to his feet, brushing his fingers against Natasha’s arm to divert her attention back to him, as he says, “And that’s where we’re taking it. Right now.”

If he plans to pull out all the stops in persuading today’s Agent in charge of evidential weaponry to let him be the one who gets to test fire it for the record, well, someone’s got to do it, sacrifices must be made, and so on.

The third time is when Clint realises that it’s become a real problem: at oh-two-hundred when the New York site is evacuated to the sound of a blaring fire alarm into the unwelcoming arms of winter. People pour out of briefings and the Control Centre, from late night R&D sessions and ‘round the clock engineering projects, and from their bunks and the gym, in various states of dress and wakefulness. It’s freezing and no one is happy to be out here, standing around in the snow at the back of a car park.

All because of a space heater with dodgy wiring.

Clint hadn’t even known about it until he’d opened the door to his room and been met by an onslaught of smoke. So much for Specialists being trusted to have their own room; he’s never going to hear the end of this. 

Sitwell, in nothing by a towel and combat boots, sends him a particularly woeful and pain-promising glare. Clint only has a t-shirt and uniform trousers himself or he’d lend him a layer, but he sees someone with a gym bag and the same idea come to Sitwell’s rescue before they’re swallowed up by the growing crowd.

“Where did you even get it from?” Clint asks, hugging himself with his hands under his armpits.

“You don’t like the cold,” Natasha says flatly.

It isn’t an answer, but she’s not wrong. He doesn’t shy away from the missions that threaten to turn him into a human icicle, it’s just that Clint has no good memories associated with freezing his ass off. They’re all about being unable to afford heating, or sleeping rough, or being held prisoner and tortured and – and so on. Much better are his memories of running wild during sweltering summers as a kid, roasting alive in a stuffy circus tent in as little material he could get away with as possible for the Amazing Hawkeye costume, and the good kind of human contact.

“You know the state of this country?” a broad shouldered Agent demands, folding his arms either as an intimidation tactic or perhaps just to keep warm. “We’re on high alert, the terrorist threat has half the country running scared, and there could have been an _actual_ emergency, but instead it’s you – ”

“Hey!” Clint gets between him and Natasha, as subtly as he can. He doesn’t question how blame has already been attributed and the news circulated. The only thing that travels faster than gossip in SHIELD is a smart Agent getting the hell out of Director Fury’s way. “How about we all calm down, yeah?”

One of Agent Attitude’s friends slings an arm around his shoulders with a sigh. “We’re all tired and cold and miserable, Ox. Leave it.”

“Fine,” he mutters as his friend manoeuvres him away. “But for fuck’s sake, control your partner, Barton.”

That clears a bit of space for the pair of them in the crowd. Clint tries to think of it as a good thing rather than a blow for the huddling like penguins method of heat conservation.

“I do not know – ” Natasha stops, struggling for the words and visibly frustrated. 

Clint uses the back of one hand to rub at his nose, which is starting to drip, and then quickly tucks it back under his armpit.

“Just… Stop bringing me things, okay? You don’t need to do that.”

“I know,” she bites out. “But people do things they do not _need_ to do. All of the time.”

He hides out in one of the least used rec rooms after, the one with the sagging sofa and the oldest TV. Natasha finds him, as always, carrying a steaming mug in her hands. It’s not her he’s avoiding though, it’s everyone else that’s too much. Or at least the people being unforgiving of others’ mistakes, especially when said other is trying their best. It’s a bit of a sore spot.

Clint eyes the mug suspiciously. 

“You brought me coffee.”

“Yes.” Natasha holds the mug out until he accepts it and then remains standing in front of him, looking at him intently. “This is ‘I like you’ coffee.”

“Okay?” Clint tries.

“The Internet said that if you want to show someone that you like them you should do things for them or give them gifts and I already do things for you, because we’re partners and partners do things for each other, and you didn’t like my gifts. So. Coffee,” she finishes, and Clint bites back the smile at how her speech patterns sometimes reflect his own now. It isn’t a good thing that she’s spent so much time with him that she’s starting to pick up some of his habits. 

“Uh-huh.” He reaches out with his free hand and tugs on her sleeve until she stops looming and comes to sit next to him, curling her legs up on the sofa. He takes a sip. “Well it’s good coffee. Did you make yourself any?”

She pulls a disgusted face that on anyone else might be called adorable.

“Coffee is foul.”

“Blasphemy.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but Clint just grins back and lifts his arm in invitation. Natasha carefully snuggles closer, her body heat making him as warm as he was when he’d been standing a few feet away from a space heater on fire, and rests her head gently on his shoulder like she’s afraid of breaking him or of rejection. He puts his arm around her and squeezes, because fuck that shit.

“So, is there anything else you’ve been looking at on the Internet that I should maybe know about?”

“The internet is full of sex and cats.” She pauses, which gives him a moment for silent panic, then adds, “I think I’d like a cat.”

Clint can’t help but laugh.

“I like you too, y’know.” 

That earns him a small, pleased smile and it hurts his heart a little, to see her happy and trustingly curled up against him like this.

“That doesn’t mean that I’m going to get you a cat. Because people don’t need to get each other things to prove that they like each other, okay? That’s…” Clint hums as he thinks about it. “Materialistic. Or something.”

“You should just say ‘thank you’,” Natasha grumbles and Clint smiles.

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”


End file.
